2016
Twitter, Raspberry Pi, Thermal Printer
For reference, a single-printer early version of this project can be found at http://hyperrhiz.io/hyperrhiz13/missives-of-love/mashbot.html
Artists’ Statement:
Loving-Together consists of two Raspberry Pis, MashBOT and Anna Coluthon, paired with two thermal printers. MashBOT and Anna converse via Twitter on the subject of love, using remixed material from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse generated via Python Markov scripts and a modified version of the Eliza therapy-chatterbot. A record of each side of the conversation is available on the printed output or via the Twitter accounts @mashomatic and @acoluthon.
Bios:
Helen J Burgess is Associate Professor of English at NC State University. She is editor of Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures and coeditor, with Craig Saper, of Electric (a Punctum Books series). In addition to Roland’s Bots, she is currently working on a number of other physical computing/Twitter manifestations of Roland Barthes’ works with Craig Saper, including MashBOT, Electric Barthes’ Flarf Scarf and (Un)Speakable Barthes.
Craig Saper, currently collaborating on a handful of reading machine projects including the Roland Bot with Helen Burgess, has co-curated an important exhibit, TypeBound (http://readies.org/typebound), on sculptural book arts and typewriter visual poetry, and he also curated exhibits on Noigandres (at U of Florida) and Assemblings (at Penn). He is the author of a biography of Bob Brown and his reading machine The Amazing Adventures of Bob Brown (Fordham UP, 2016), Intimate Bureaucracies (2012), Networked Art (2001), Artificial Mythologies (1997) and has edited or co-edited volumes, with his introductions, including recent books on Electracy (2015), Imaging Place (2009), and special issues of Rhizomes.net on Posthumography (2010) and Drifts (2007). He has recently edited, with new introductions, editions of Bob Brown’s volumes related to Brown’s machine including Words (2014), Gems (2014), The Readies (2014), and 1450-1950 (2015) all available at http://rovingeyepress.com. Saper’s work on visual and concrete poetry appears in the books and projects mentioned above as well as in volumes including The Fluxus Reader (1997) and most recently in an exhibition catalogue essay, “The Banana Paradox,” in Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana (2015). His other AR and VR reading machines and documentaries about these machines will start appearing in 2017. He is editing a volume for the new peer-reviewed scholarly book-equivalent publishing enterprise, electric.press, on AR and VR works.